Sir William Henry Glanville CB CBE FRS (1 February 1900 – 30 June 1976) was a British civil engineer.Royal Society Obituary During World War II he and the Road Research Laboratory were involved in important war work, developing temporary runways, beach analysis, and tank and aircraft design. He also worked on the explosives calculations and scale models used to develop the bouncing bombs used in the Dam Busters Raid.
He was widely recognised for his contributions to engineering and, amongst a string of professional awards, was appointed as a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE), as a Companion of the Order of the Bath and knighted.
Early life William Glanville was born on 1 February 1900 in Willesden, Middlesex, the second child, and only son, of Amelia and William Glanville. His father was originally from Cornwall and worked as a builder. Known to his friends as Bill, he was educated at Kilburn Grammar School from 1911 to 1918. His did not distinguish himself at the school except in his ability in shooting, at which he represented the school in competitions at the National Rifle Association's ranges in Bisley, Surrey and won several prizes. Whilst at school he taught himself shorthand, on his own initiative. Glanville served briefly in the British Army during the final stages of the First World War. After demobilisation he applied to study civil engineering at East London College (now Queen Mary, University of London) in 1919 making use of a grant provided for the education of former servicemen. He excelled at university and graduated top of his year, with first class honours in 1922.Sharp, Robert; ‘Glanville, Sir William Henry (1900–1976)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004, . Retrieved 23 April 2008 One of his classmates was Caleb Grafton Roberts, who became chairman of the Country Roads Board in Australia.
Building Research Station
Upon graduation Glanville entered employment as an engineering assistant at the Building Research Station (which would become the Building Research Establishment) in East Acton. Glanville was only the third person employed by the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research (DSIR) to undertake research work at the underfunded station which was established in April 1921. He became its second engineering assistant. The BRS was led by director Reginald Stradling, who held two doctorates and had also served during the war. The BRS was one of a number of research station within DSIR which had been set up during the First World War to develop industry in Britain to replace imports of essential goods which were threatened by the war.
Glanville's first investigation at the Building Research Station (BRS) was to study how the water permeability of concrete varied and, with Duff Abrams, was one of the first to attribute this primarily to the water-cement ratio and not to the type and proportions of aggregate used. He also found that concrete became much more impermeable when cured by immersion in water, compared with the more popular air curing method. He continued his work in this field, investigating the bond between concrete and steel reinforcement, shrinkage of the material and creep and flow under load. Glanville's work was among the first scientific research into reinforced concrete, the design and installation of which had previously been governed almost entirely by practical experience rather than scientific theory.
Glanville's became an associate member of the Institution of Civil Engineers in 1925. In 1925 the BRS moved to Garston near Watford. After the move Glanville's focus switched to development of new methods of testing building materials, designing and installing new testing equipment at the BRS and carrying out research on concrete, structural steel, brickwork and the acoustic properties of materials. His work on the creep and flow of concrete led to a PhD from the University of London in 1927. Glanville was appointed head of the BRS' engineering section ("Chief Engineer") in 1928. His responsibilities encompassed all of the BRS's engineering work including the management of its research, development of equipment and investigations of structural failures as well maintenance and expansion of the station. Glanville continued his own research into concrete and received, in 1930, a DSc degree from the University of London. In later life he reflected on this period of his career as his happiest and most professionally rewarding.
In 1931 he was consulted by London County Council on the drawing up of a code of practice for the use of reinforced concrete in buildings. The report, drawing heavily on Glanville's research, was published in 1933 and later incorporated into British Standards code 114. His research covered almost every aspect of concrete use in construction and included shrinkage stresses, creeping, and permeability as well as work on indeterminate structures, timber roofs, and curved bracing members. Some of his later work in the field focussed on continuous reinforced concrete beams and portal frame structures and he was the first to show that apparent increased in load-bearing capacity could result from creep in the concrete and plastic deformation of the reinforcing steel. Another of his later works was a study carried out for the Road Research Laboratory on the performance of reinforced concrete slabs in roads when exposed to static loads. Glanville was appointed a member of the ICE research sub-committee on reinforced concrete reservoirs in 1934. In the early 1930s he carried out research on the use of driven concrete piles, which had previously been little studied. Collaborating with Geoffrey Grime, W. W. Davies and the Federation of Civil Engineering Contractors he developed a means of estimating the amount of driving force a pile could be exposed to without damage. This involved a mixture of analytical work and practical experimentation on sites at the laboratory and across London. The team developed apparatus using piezo-electric strain gauges to measure dynamic stress during driving, the set-up was later adapted to measure blast pressures from explosions. The work helped provide guidance to designers and contractors on installing the piles in various ground conditions. There had previously been no method of determining if piles were suitable for the ground conditions before they were installed on site, leading to some dangerous failures of piles whilst being driven by heavy hammers.
Glanville's 1930 three-part paper Studies in reinforced concrete and further work he carried out in 1939 formed the basis for design codes for reinforced concrete structures which became British Standard CP114. Glanville, with W. L. Scott, wrote a handbook on the use of the code which has since been continually updated and remains a standard text for concrete design engineers. Glanville's last edition was published in 1950 with Scott (who died before publication) and F. G. Thomas of the BRS.
Glanville remained at the research station until 1936 when he was asked to become deputy director of the Road Research Laboratory (RRL) in Harmondsworth. The RRL had been founded just three years earlier. He became a full member of the ICE in 1934. He retained an interest in concrete as a material throughout the rest of his career.
Road Research Laboratory The RRL had been formed in 1933 with Stradling taking the directorship jointly with his previous role at the BRS. The RRL had been formed by the transfer of the Experimental Station of the Ministry of Transport to DSIR. The ministry had opposed this move and intervened to limit the RRL's research to the fields of materials and methodologies, research into traffic management and road safety was prohibited. Glanville was appointed deputy director and officer in charge after the previous appointee R. G. C. Batson resigned to take up the chair of engineering at Liverpool University. At the RRL Glanville took on an increasingly more administrative role, devolving research to his assistants, however he still found time to undertake a comprehensive study of the performance of concrete roads. He also established a section of the laboratory to work exclusively on soil mechanics, a subject which was beginning to come to the fore of building and infrastructure design. He was appointed assistant director of the RRL in 1936 and director in 1939. Glanville moved with the RRL to share facilities with the Radio Research Station during the Munich crisis of 1938 as the War Office took over their Harmondsworth facility. They returned to Harmondsworth shortly afterwards. Took on the directorship in April 1939 after Stradling resigned upon appointment as chief scientific officer to the Ministry of Home Security, which had been established to consider matters of air raid precautions as the Second World War loomed. Glanville insisted on the title being amended from Director of the Road Research Laboaratory to "Director of Road Research", as he believed his remit should encompass all roads research within the DSIR. Later that year a House of Lords select committee (led by Robert Munro, 1st Baron Alness) on road accidents recommended that road safety research body be established as a new board. Glanville sought to bring this within the RRL but disagreements between the Ministry of Transport and DSIR on how the committee's recommendations should be implemented meant that nothing was achieved before the Second World War broke out.
War work
At the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939 Glanville was put in charge of the research and experiments department of the Ministry of Home Security as chief scientific adviser at the Princes Risborough station. The station was situated here to avoid German air raids. A meeting called by Dr Edward Appleton, secretary of DSIR, decided that air raid precautions work of the BRS should be transferred to the RRL under Glanville's direction. He was granted authority to assign additional staff to the programme and also received staff from the BRS and the National Physical Laboratory. The RRL received additional work from the Ministry of Home Security, the Admiralty, the War Office, the Air Ministry, the Ministry of Aircraft Production, the Ministry of Supply and the Ministry of Defence and Glanville found that defence matters accounted for up to 70% of the department's work.
Glanville also acted as an advisor to the Air Ministry and the Ministry of Aircraft Production on the construction of concrete runways and specialised airfields. The latter included "Prefabricated Bituminised Surfacing" (PBS) made from bitumen-impregnated hessian laid over steel mesh which could act as a runway surface over swampy or otherwise difficult ground. These PBS airstrips had a service life of around four months and were easily transportable, in the course of the war 60 million square yards of PBS were manufactured in the UK, US and India. The soil section of the BRS, assisted by Glanville, was also responsible for the assessment and categorisation of European beaches prior to the Normandy Landings.